The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Autumn 2013 Paris Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
Founder/CEO, Founder Institute
Adeo Ressi is the founder and CEO of the Founder Institute, the worlds largest startup-technology company accelerator. The Institute is the eighth startup that Mr. Ressi has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating. Mr. Ressi was also a Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide.
Alain Garnier
CEO & Co-Founder, Jamespot
Alain Garnier est le co-fondateur et CEO du service Web de réseau social dentreprise Jamespot. Auparavant il a été successivement co-fondateur dARISEM (éditeur de logiciel leader dans le domaine de lanalyse sémantique appliquée au Web) en 1996 revendu en 2003 à Thales et dEvalimage (outil de monitoring du buzz des marques) revendu à TheCRMCompany en 2006. Par ailleurs, il est lauteur de "Linformation non structurée dans lentreprise" et "Le réseau social dentreprise", collection Hermès Lavoisier, et anime de nombreuses conférences sur le thème de lEntreprise2.0 et des questions autour du numérique.
Alain Meller
Founder, NovaXone
Alain Meller has been the CEO of Kalabie, a software vendor selling to the Pharma Industry and was acquired by Agilent Technologies Inc. in 2007. Before that he cofounded Convergent Capital a VC fund investing in France and Israel, was Managing Director for E-business at NCR-AT&T and was part of the initial team as well as member of the management board of ILOG where he led one of the major product then was instrumental in the industrialization of the company. He is currently founder of NovaXone a Management Consulting firm with a particular focus on Marketing Strategy.
Alain Baritault
Co-Founder, Cités Numériques
Alain has opened the Paris Founder Institute in France early 2010. Prior to Paris FI, he worked as a journalist based in Silicon Valley reporting on technology for more than 22 years. Alain has also been co-founder and Editor in Chief of Cités Numériques, a technology magazine for cities, regions and government in France and is now founder and editor in Chief of Collectiv-IT.fr. Previoulsy, he has been editor in chief and US correspondent for major French magazines and newspapers as Decision Informatique, 01 Informatique, SVM, La Tribune and PC Expert. He has been an advisor for many foreign companies looking for Investors, Partners and Customers in the US.
Alexandre Steiner
Managing Partner, OiO Ventures
Alexandre Steiner est le fondateur et Managing Partner d’OiO Ventures dont l’activité consiste à bâtir des portefeuilles de participations minoritaires dans des entreprises innovantes pour des grands groupes. Auparavant, après des études en France puis aux Etats Unis, il a été pendant 15 ans dans diverses fonctions dans le groupe Capgemini en France, en Belgique, En Suède, au Royaume Uni… du Corporate Development au lancement de nouvelles activités à Vice-Président Portfolio Management Process puis chez Getronics pendant 7 ans, racheté par KPN, Vice-Président du développement des offres de services, puis de l’innovation et de la stratégie B-to-B. Il est intervenu à de nombreuses reprises dans des évènements comme le Gartner Expo ou CIO summit, … et participe à différents programmes d’incubateurs privilégiant son expérience internationale et ses secteurs de prédilections : Numérique, Nouvelles Technologies, Telecom et Media.
Aline Hemmo
Consultant, Pilsoft
Aline Hemmo works as a consultant at Pilsoft, which she founded in 1997. She is also an admission officer in a top-ranked international MBA program, and a graduate of EPF Ecole dIngénieurs and HEC School of Management.
Ash Maurya
Founder & CEO, Spark59
Ash is the Founder & CEO of Spark59, which has a mission of helping other startups raise their odds of success. Ash is also the author of Running Lean, and a mentor at various startup accelerators around the world including: Mozilla Foundation (San Francisco), Year One Labs (Montreal), MARs (Toronto), Ideally (Brussels), and Capital Factory (Austin). Before Spark59, Ash was Founder and CEO of WiredReach, which built simple file and media sharing products used by businesses to share and collaborate around large files. Ash holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Bruno Levy
CEO, Value Logic
Bruno is the partner and co-founder of Value Logic SAS, which helps companies carefully define and select their innovation investments in order to boost their grow and competitiveness in a target market. Brunos previous positions include co-founder of SmartTrade, president and co-founder of Hypermind, worldwide product manager at ILOG, and CEO at Sobesol. He holds an engineering degree from Ecole Poytechnique, a masters degree in EE and MBA in entrepreneurship from Carnegie Melon University, and is a scholar of robotics from Tokyo University.
Christophe Cremer
President, MeilleurTaux.com
Christophe Crémer, administrateur de sociétés. Créateur de sybel-informatique, société de logiciel de gestion pour micro-ordinateurs (B to B) revendue en 1995 au groupe anglais Sage. Fondateur et président de meilleurtaux.com de 2000 à 2008. Avec 50 Millions de CA en 2007 48 agences et plus de 500 collaborateurs, meilleurtaux.com est leader en France dans le domaine du courtage en prêts immobiliers. Meilleurtaux.com a été mis en bourse en mai 2005 puis revendu à une holding principalement composée du groupe Caisse dEpargne en septembre 2007. Christophe Crémer est parrain de lincubateur HEC qui vise à aider des projets de création dentreprises à réussir, il investit et simplique dans des projets principalement sur internet.
Edouard Morhange
CEO, MonsieurCinema.com
Edouard Morhange is an entrepreneur in the digital and commnication domains. He was the founder in 1998 of MonsieurCinema.com, the French equivalent of IMDB, cofounded with M. Pierre Tchernia and sold to LibertySurf Group in May 2000. Then he founded Nouveau Jour, a leading BTL communication agency on the French market, sold in 2007 to QobliQ Ltd, a communication and sponsorship group backed by AIM-listed fund Ingenious Media Active Capital Limited. As a Jamie Oliver Food Revolution ambassador in France, Edouard Morhange is commited in raising awareness and inspiring people to reconnect with food to make a lasting, positive impact on their lives.
Justin Wilcox
CTO, Nimbus Health
Justin Wilcox started his first company at the age of 10, and hasn’t been able to stop. Graduating from Cal Poly’s Computer Science program, Justin worked at Microsoft for five years before leaving to start Nimbus Health – an electronic medical record company. In addition to running Nimbus, he’s launched a couple mobile apps in his spare time, including a top seller in the Travel Category and Bounce on Android. When Justin’s not entrepreneuring, he’s blogging at CustomerDevLabs.com about entrepreneuring or maybe doin’ a little dancing.
Maximilien Oursel
Associé, Pléiade Venture
Maximilien OURSEL, Associé chez Pléiade Venture. De formation universitaire (Dauphine et UPMC), j’investis et jaccompagne les entreprises innovantes en tant quinvestisseur en capital depuis 1999 au sein de la structure Seeft/Pléiade Venture.
Philippe Beauregard
Managing Partner, Brunswick Law Firm
Philippe Beauregards areas of practice include venture capital, private equity and M&A. In the past 12 years, his main focus has been on the representation of start-ups — or investors — at all stages of their development in a wide variety of industries (life sciences, energy, software, mobile/telecom and the internet). He is the head of Brunswick corporate department, a french independent business law firm operating also in the field of IP, IPOs, insolvency, business disputes, tax and labour law
Pierre-Antoine Durgeat
Product Manager, Novacodex
Pierre-Antoine is advising companies through his consulting firm NovaCodex, building on his startup experience and his lean product development approach to ensure efficient design and implementation of technological projects. Prior to Novacodex, Pierre-Antoine has created and operated several large internet services, both as CTO and as founder (dismoiou, Boonty, Mappy, SNV). Pierre-Antoine graduated from Supélec in 1998 with Masters degree in Engineering.
Roxanne Varza
Editor , TechCrunch France
Roxanne Varza is currently the Editor of TechCrunch France and the co-founder of Girls in Tech Paris. After graduating from UCLA, she worked for the French governments foreign direct investment agency (lAgence française pour les investissements internationaux) to help fast-growing Silicon Valley tech startups develop activities in France. She then moved to Europe, where she is currently pursuing a joint masters degree at Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics in addition to TechCrunch and Grils in Tech. She is passionate about startups and innovation and is an epilipsy advocate.
Sebastien Sacard
Directeur, Produit Web
Après avoir été Responsable Technique chez Kelkoo puis Chef de Produit Senior chez Yahoo! pendant 7 ans, Sébastien a été Directeur Produit chez Drimki, puis Directeur Technique chez Myfab. Il a ensuite été co-fondateur de la Startup Advertory en tant que Directeur Technique & Produit. Depuis 5 ans il accompagne des startups et des PME à mettre en place une organisation produit (vision, stratégie, développement) afin de livrer plus rapidement des produits répondants à la demande de leurs clients. Sébastien anime également des ateliers sur la gestion de projet Agile, et travaille actuellement à la mise en place dun media en ligne sur la Vision Produit.
Thibauld Favre
CEO, AllMyApps
Thibauld Favres Summary Entrepreneur in the Internet and Open Source industries with relevant sales, financial and technical knowledge and experience. Thibauld Favres Experience CEO allmyapps Internet industry November 2008 – Present (2 years 10 months) 1 click is all it takes for users to fully customize their desktop with apps, themes, wallpapers... thanks to allmyapps auto-installable Packs.
Tyler Crowley
Founder & CEO, Skweal
Tyler has been helping startups with their important pitches since the first TechCrunch40 events and continues today with the LAUNCH conference, where he works one-on-one with each company to create the most compelling pitch possible for press and partners. Tyler is also co-host of This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis where he regularly shares insights on the art and science of pitching investors.
Yannick Levy
VP, Parrot
Yannick Levy is VP at Parrot since September 2011. Parrot is the global leader in wireless devices for mobile phones, listed on NYSE Euronext (PARRO). Prior to Parrot, he founded DiBcom in 2000, the leading start-up in Mobile TV solutions for Cars, Handheld and Home consumer applications, which was acquired by Parrot in September 2011. Very interested in international business, Yannick studied in the U.S.A. for four years and spent one year in China in 2010. Areas of interest are Semiconductor, Television, Venture Capital and entrepreneurship.
